The Sounds of South America

TTHE SOUNDS OF SSOUTH AAMERICA Teachers’ Guide Music of the people 12 Charles Lane, Amherst, MA 01002-3801. Phone: 413-549-9155, Email: [email protected] About MarKamusic: From the windy barren high plateaus of the Andes, the mystical Amazon and Caribbean rain forests, the desert coasts washed by the Pacific and the Atlantic and the heat of the Caribbean comes a high-energy, multi- national musical ensemble that performs music deeply rooted within the folkloric, pop and traditional genres of Latin and South America. MarKamusic musicians sensibly render the musical forms and the soulful art of the cultures and countries from the south. The resulting product is an ever changing, eclectic weave of ancient, modern, aboriginal and popular themes performed on a fascinating array of native-indigenous, western and African influenced instruments. Like their ancestors before them, MarKamusic musicians draw from the depths of their unique cultural past: Inca, Quechua, Maya, Aymara, Taino, West African and Iberian. MarKamusic embraces musical history but then takes it to an altogether different place. Fused with the feelings and creations of younger generations, during its performances and workshops, MarKamusic emphasizes the musical and cultural contributions of the four major influences that have shaped modern Latin American music at large: the indigenous, the West African, the Iberian, and the United States. Traditional rhythms and musical forms from these diverse cultures slowly fused over the centuries, creating today's South American and Latin American traditional, folk and popular musics. MarKamusic's careful choice of repertoire and instrumentation conveys this historic evolution to the audience. Deeply moving and full of fresh and ancient energy, MarKamusic’s songs call out to the senses of our collective human memory and to the doors of our ancient hearts. A sense of unity is evoked among listeners as they share the enchanting musical journey of MarKamusic. MarKamusic’s Goals: MarKamusic’s goal is to debunk western stereotypes of South American music and culture in particular, and Latin music and culture at large. By sharing the many musical gifts of these lands in their purest forms as well as blended with newer, hybrid creations of subsequent artistic and historic musical developments, MarKamusic portrays the vast cultural wealth of these regions in a cornucopia of musical knowledge. In the United States, profit interested groups have purposely created an aura of mysticism and mystery around the South American music genre and its people. Their efforts, geared to maximize the genre’s consumption and thus their own profitability, have misinformed North American audiences about the poise, representation, performance, accuracy and content of South American music. In combination with North American’s increasing interest in cultural diversity, North American audiences have been deceived into accepting profit-motivated, prepackaged products. MarKamusic treats these exquisite musical traditions with the care and love fostered by our own ancestral roots and hopes to share with listeners the enriching recognition that America is larger than the United States; that America in fact stretches from the state of Alaska down through the tip of Tierra del Fuego. The members of MarKamusic feel that our multiplicity of cultures tied by history and geography but separated by politics, race and language can most effectively be reconciled by the sharing, indeed, the merging, of our musical-artistic expressions. MarKamusic musicians strive to embody the potential for this harmonious exchange by drawing on the talents and resources of one Peruvians, one Ecuadorian, three Puerto Ricans and one Guatemalan. 2 Copyright 2007 MarKamusic Publishing Historical Background to MarKamusic's music The Americas have always been a world of immigrants. The first waves arrived in the Northern regions of North America fifteen to twenty thousand years ago. These very first Native Americans, during the last Ice era, migrated slowly southward from Asia, across the Bering stretch into North America. Other theorists believe that seamen from as far away as the Polynesian Islands may have navigated through the Islands of the Pacific Ocean until they reached the Northern Peruvian coast. Many myths and legends abound from the Mochica and Chimu civilizations that lend support to this theory. There are a good number of visual depictions and cultural artifacts that have been found in archaeological expeditions to the regions inhabited by these two civilizations in northern Peru that illustrate this possibility (such as scenes depicting the arrival of their Gods from the ocean found on vases and the rafts of these cultures that resemble many rafts used by the Polynesians). It is very probable though, that our earlier ancestors from Asia were the ones that moved south from Alaska and eventually dispersed into hundreds of bands, clans, tribes, villages and cities first in North America and later in Central and South America. More recent linguistic studies also lend more credibility to this idea. The Quechua language has been found to have primarily Semitic roots as well as Arabic influences. It is also thought that at one point, more than 400 different nations coexisted in North America. At the time of the Spanish and Portuguese invasion of South America and the Caribbean five hundred years ago as many as 1500 indigenous languages were spoken there, matched by at least that many forms of music. Much of this music was vocal, commonly heard in religious and ceremonial rituals. Some cultures had no musical instruments, yet others had literally hundreds, including bull-roarers (a trumpet made from the horn of an animal, elongated empty tree trunks or a conch shell) measuring from a few inches to several feet in length; flutes of gold, silver, cane, human and animal bones; skin drums made from logs, clay or human bodies; wooden gongs fabricated from huge logs. The list is nearly infinite. It is thought that even string instruments existed among some of these cultures, but this theory remains largely debated. Soldiers of fortune, missionaries and colonists from Spain and Portugal formed the second wave of immigrants to South America, beginning with Columbus' first encounter with the “New” World in 1492. The Iberian musical legacy includes various forms of the ancestor of the guitar which were known then as guitarrillos and other European musical instruments, especially the harp, violin, and military band instruments including the trumpet, saxophone and snare-drum. In South America, various regional guitar-like instruments evolved that the natives molded after the small guitar like instruments brought by the European immigrants and colonists of the time. The diminutive Charango (often made from the shell of the Armadillo) and the Ronroco (a larger Charango-like instrument) in the Andes; the twelve-string Tiple in Colombia, the Cuatro in the plains shared by Venezuela and Colombia; and the Viola Caipira and Cavaquinho of Brazil. In Chile and Argentina, the Spanish guitar has remained virtually intact as the most common musical instrument. In the Caribbean as in South America, many small stringed instruments also developed including the Cuatro, Bordonua and Timple in Puerto Rico and the Tres in Cuba. All over Latin America, Spanish troubadour singing and European influenced strumming traditions, like the stringed instruments and language, persist in barely modified form to this day. The third wave—African slaves forced from West Africa—also contributed significantly to the culture, religion and music of the Americas. Hispanic Roman Catholicism allowed African culture and music to continue in ways somewhat reminiscent of the African homeland. The continuance of call-and-response singing permitted group-cohesiveness to persist. African people found their Indian counterparts to be culturally and musically closer to their own. Music among the Indians was also used to strengthen group cohesiveness, and was practiced communally as an intrinsic part of life. So immersed was music within the life of the Indians that, in Quechua, the most important language of the Andes, a word to designate the concept of music did not exist. Not only were the social functions of music among Africans and Indians similar, but their dance forms were more reminiscent of each other as well. Both cultures used dance for courtship, to celebrate religious fairs and festivals, ceremonies and social events. The African slaves and the Indians blended their races and their music Copyright 2007 MarKamusic Publishing 3 over the centuries to create a multitude of rhythms inspired by the African and Indigenous mother lands. African slaves juxtaposed their polyrhythms (layers of rhythms in one song) over the indigenous melodies. At the same time new musical instruments such as skin drums made from logs (like the Andean Bombo), musical bows (like the Brazilian Berimbau), stringed instruments (like the Banjo in the U.S.), and xylophones (like the Guatemalan Gourds Marimba) were created in the New World from those that were collectively recalled from West Africa. These new musical forms and instruments can still be discerned today. From the mixture of Indian, African and European bloods new races and sentiments came about. From Indian and European bloods came the Mestizo and from the blend of African and European, the Mulatto was born. Nowadays the music, food, clothes, culture and religion from the area reflect these diversely

Load more